Transnational Pedagogy: Doing Political Work in Women's Studies An Interview with Chandra Talpade Mohanty

Ena Dua and Alissa Trotz, editors

For more than two decades, Chandra a global feminist, politics. Also on our minds was Talpade Mohanty's work has framed the issues for the challenge of rethinking women's studies through global feminist organizing. Her article, "Under a transnational lens. Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial We were interested in exploring the ways Discourses" (1991), has become a touchstone for in which implicit forms of nationalism continued to feminists struggling to grapple with the relations of shape feminist knowledge and politics. Before we imperialism and their implications for feminism. It were able to carry out the interview, the events of interrogated the ways in which geographic location September 11 took place. The wave of American and different histories structure relationships nationalism, and the ability of the United States to between feminists; in particular, it considered how impose its hegemony on international politics, has a Western gaze defined feminist knowledge of devastated many of our hopes for the possibilities of Third World women. This seminal article gave transnational feminism. It has brought a new voice to the struggle of many Third World feminists urgency to exploring questions of power in to gain an equal space within global feminist praxis, international politics and national difference, as and has led to a redefining of power relationships well as the ways in which feminism/women's between First World and Third World feminists. studies might challenge the hegemony of Western During the past decade, feminists have been dominance. addressing another set of challenges. A new phase In this interview we explore a number of of globalization is transforming women's work and wide-ranging questions with Chandra. We begin by lives throughout the world. In Feminist exploring gendered/feminist perspectives on Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic globalisation, and ask to what extent these Futures (1997), co-edited with Jacqui Alexander, perspectives have made their way into the Mohanty's writing continues to frame the issues for mainstream. We discuss how the events of feminist organizing in this new era. Importantly, she September 11th have been gendered in very has suggested that located within this conjuncture particular ways. In the final two sections of the are new opportunities for organizing - opportunities interview, Chandra reflects on her own involvement that are tied to the increasing similarities between in grassroots activism, and offers some thoughts on women's work in North and South locations. feminist activism within the academy. Chandra ends In June, 2001, Chandra Talpade Mohanty by reflecting on the ways in which was a visiting scholar at the Ontario Institute for internationalization is taking place within women's Studies in Education/University of Toronto, where studies. she co-taught a specially run seminar series on anti-racist feminism. While in Toronto, she also GENDERING GLOBALIZATION: gave a public lecture on globalization and the WHERE ARE WE AT? academy. We approached Chandra to see if she would share some of her views with a larger Ena audience. Particularly on our minds was the In your writing, one of your central arguments has challenge of creating a transnational, as opposed to been that gender is constitutive of globalization. How does one make that relationship visible? form of knowledge production has been factored into both mainstream and critical analyses of Chandra globalization? Has it affected how globalization is I think it is critical to try to connect some of the taught or researched, or has it emerged as a larger questions of political economy to questions sub-specialty, gender and globalization, whereas the of subjectivity and identity and community. Those critical analysis of globalization is left untouched? connections are central to thinking about gender and globalization. If we do a good job, then I think it Chandra becomes possible to see that while the effects of I don't think that gender as a lens has become globalization on most disenfranchised communities visible at all in the mainstream. The only way that are pretty devastating, it's also true that it opens up gendered analyses of globalization become visible certain possibilities for women as well. is when people are aware of the exploitation of, say, Making connections between political women workers in Nike factories. Otherwise, economy and questions of subjectivity and identity questions of gender continue to be sidelined. Most and agency enable us to present a narrative that often, globalization is presented in a kind of explicitly encodes the complexities of women's non-gendered and non-classed language. Take the lives under globalization, that doesn't present us example of the IMF or the World Bank. When they with caricatures of women. It's important for us to talk about globalization, the language is about profit recreate more comprehensive stories of women's and accumulation rather than exploitation and lives and agencies within this context, to combat the poverty, or about the power or powerlessness of monolithic images that are circulated about women governments. These are all examples of a as victims. non-gendered analysis and an implicitly masculinist A good example is what is happening now, discourse. post September 11. For instance, one of the ways What is made invisible through such a feminists could contest the whole discourse around discourse is how processes of globalization have the war against terror would be to really point out essentially re-colonized women's and girls' bodies the history of the resistance of women within and labours at different places and sites around the Islamic culture and communities; to create much world. The fact is that women are invisible in the more nuanced stories about their lives, the choices dominant discourses of policy making and the they have made about the different forms of rule in relations of rule that have to do with globalization. those contexts and what was possible for them. What is also interesting, and somewhat Revealing these layers of complexity surprising perhaps, is that in general the makes it possible to disrupt the kinds of images that anti-globalization movement also does not include are monolithic and get coopted immediately. A a feminist analysis. It's a movement comprised, it singular solitary image without any depth to it is seems, of a loose coalition of groups, which easy to coopt and weave into your particular includes some women's peace groups, women's self-interest. This is what's happening now with all environmental groups and that even has women in these discourses of protectionism that seem to be leadership positions, especially when students mobilized on behalf of Afghani women. The organize on campuses. Yet gender is not really discussion needs to be nuanced in the sense that present in thinking about anti-globalization and it's there are things we can do to make the agency of fascinating that it's not central to it. people who are devastated by globalization more visible. Even to do just that would really completely Ena change a lot of different things; in particular, the Why do you think it's not central in critical work on Eurocentrism of this discourse. globalization?

Alissa Chandra Given the extent of feminist scholarship and One of my ideas is that in the places where we teach activism addressing the ways in which gender is about gender, like in women's studies and maybe constitutive of globalisation, would you say that this feminist departments, maybe we have not really addressed the issues or come up with an strategy"? anti-capitalist/anti-globalization critique. I think some of the students are not learning this, or rather, Chandra these are not the sites where are they getting this Well, I'm not sure that production is the only site, or knowledge [of anti-globalization] from. They are that I would situate it in this way, but I think it is getting it from new Marxist critiques, and some are one of the key sites. One of the most visible ways to getting it from environmental movements, but the actually see how exploitation and profit and more or less purist left thinkers that people draw on accumulation really function is to study how work to really mobilize anti-globalization movements are is organised globally. I am not saying that this not people who pay attention to gender. moment is that different from all earlier moments in Interestingly enough, "gender and capitalist development. There is a lot of continuity globalization," as a central intellectual and political in the development of capitalism and right now it's nexus, has not entered into the interdisciplinary just exacerbated and it takes different forms, and it space of women's studies. Gender and globalization moves in different ways and it's dispersed in is a growing area of research and perhaps teaching, different ways, and so on. However, it honestly but it seems pretty contained among a small group seems to me right now that this is one of the sites in of scholars and the discussion is quite specialised. which you can identify forms of exploitation, make So analyses of globalization have not made their them visible and then organize globally around way into mainstream feminist research in the way workers' identities. that this work needs to. This goes back to the point I made in my talk in Toronto, which is that I think Ena that the kind of transnational feminist framework How do you see your argument as similar or we need to be building now has to be an explicitly different from earlier left strategies? anti-capitalist one. One that names forms of capitalism, examines the connection between those Chandra and the creation of subjectivity and identities and I think it is continuous with earlier analyses of the traces patterns of resistance around that. It seems to importance of organising labour within unions as me that in order to actually be relevant to the well as across national borders. It's different, current moment within women's studies, we need to however, in that I really want to shift the theoretical be doing this work. understanding of work and the category of worker This is political work within women's to take into account how both categories are studies: developing this kind of analysis and inflected by not just class, but race and gender as figuring out ways in which we can become much well. This is crucial for understanding both work more visible political actors in the social and workers, because through this we can start movements, which, by the way, seem to attract thinking about coalitions and solidarity in ways that people who would call themselves feminist, but the address earlier problems of racial exclusion and movements themselves don't necessarily include a masculinism in the history of labour organizing. So feminist agenda. And if gender isn't made visible, if it's continuous with earlier left strategies, but I think it isn't an important critical lens in these that I try to bring in more of the complexity of the movements, then it's almost like there's a latent identity of the workers. masculinism which just keeps reproducing itself. What I am trying to do is examine the connections between how globalization is gendered Alissa and racialised, and how local cultures and other In your article in Feminist Genealogies you speak kinds of divisions are utilized to position women's about possibilities of the category of work to enable bodies and labour in very particular ways within feminist transnational politics by providing a point those sites. In essence, how this work, which has of departure for constructing disobedient female women at its centre, forms the basis of the global subjectivities and possible coalitions. I want to economy. explore why production seems to be the key for you. Are you suggesting that this is the only "line of Alissa Chandra You mentioned that production is not the only site. What I have been thinking is, where are the women Can you talk about some of the other sites you see in this, where are some of the places that women as important? appear in the discursive construction of the September 11th events. I am struck by the ways in Chandra which certain dominant representations of gender One good example would be reproductive rights, have led North Americans to feel loyal to this war. which centre around women's bodily integrity and Women have clearly been visible in much autonomy. The ways in which reproduction works of this. The best example perhaps is Condoleeza across national boundaries now is a very important Rice, who is speaking for a war game in which site for transnational feminist connections. women really have no stake. Yet she is not the only Organizing around questions of fertility and woman who is visible. We know that there were infertility get cast in very different ways, depending American women who died on 9/11. We know that on whether you are in the north or south, or what there are many women who have been widowed. So kinds of privilege you have. one set of images that we have been given is of The patriarchal familial context, especially American women as victims, as losing lives, within religious fundamentalist communities, is widowed and mourning. It is reminiscent of the old another really important site for thinking about colonial scenario about white men saving white feminism and how to make connections. One of the women from brown men. more interesting things is the challenge of religious We are also seeing women as fundamentalism in almost all contexts, Jewish, representatives of the war, as fighter pilots for Islamic, Hindu, Christian. We're talking about example. The message is twofold. First, look how serious forms of control of various kinds that get progressive we are. But it is also look, women are written on the bodies of women; religion does this, willing to die for our country as well. One of the nations do this, because women still are the bearers most interesting women in this is Condoleeza Rice. of culture in many ways and so these sites seem to She is extremely visible and she is also portrayed as be really important places to do some thinking. having power, even though she does not appear on Religion is not an area that we as feminists have television a lot. In all of this, her gender and race really taken on in this way, we haven't figured out are supposed to be irrelevant. What she is, what she how to address women who are part of these stands for, is the American nation. A very networks and where to offer alternatives. How does interesting spokesperson for the US "motherland." one address religion as a site that seems to be This representation of women is perfect, colonizing women on the one hand and mobilizing actually, for creating consensus for the war women on the other? In fact feminists in India are machinery. We either see women as loyal doing some excellent work in this area. We need a participants in the war, or we see women as victims, lot of thinking around this. The forms of religion which allows us to see Americans as basically and spirituality feminists have developed in the first victims. Such representations of victimization have world/North, seem to be apart from engaging with affected our ability to ask searching questions about these questions. the ways in which American foreign policy helped create Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. SEPTEMBER 11™ And then, of course, there are other women who are visible. These are "Arab and Muslim" Ena women in the US, as well as Afghani and Pakistani What is on many of our minds today is the women. Ironically the visibility of these women has challenges that the events of September 11 and its also created a seeming consensus for the war. For aftermath have posed to transnational feminist example, we have this discussion about how the organising. It raises the need to understand how Imams at the mosque were asking women to take gender, as well as nationalism, have framed the off their veils and cover their heads with caps and events. hats that had American logos. What's interesting here is that when American Arab and Muslim women have been visible, the hijab is used to The result is that Sept 11 has intensified various displace them from the national space. On rare forms of patriarchal control in both Afghanistan as occasions (and never on mainstream media) we get well as in the West. to hear the voices of American Muslim women who challenge this rabid nationalism. For example, the GRASSROOTS ACTIVISM number of women who have pointed out that while they have been made to feel like foreigners, they are Alissa American. In your public lecture in Toronto, you mentioned On the other side you have the Afghani your involvement in grassroots activist groups women. Suddenly the US has become the great located in both India and the United States. Many of champions of Afghani women. This is also part of us who have migrated from the South have the old colonial scenario. White men saving brown attempted to do this in our own political work, with women from brown men. What is forgotten in this different degrees of success. We wonder if you are the Islamic and Afghani women who have been could elaborate a bit on what this entails. drawing attention to their plight under the Taliban for some time: who have, in fact, been taking on Chandra precisely these patriarchal misogynist forms of There are three groups that I have been and am abuse and control of women. In order for the old involved in. The first is Awareness, a group in colonial scenario to work, the Revolutionary Orissa, that is primarily peasant and tribal. The Afghanistan Women's Association, and the many second is Grassroots Leadership, a group in North feminists from all over the Islamic world, have to Carolina that basically came out of the civil rights be erased. movement and was organized mainly around But I guess this is what complicates a questions of class and racial justice. It is primarily feminist response to Sept 11th. On the one hand it a group of African American and white organizers, is true that Afghani women and Pakistani women and I ended up being the first non-black or non- living under fundamentalist regimes face really white person on their board. More recently I have terrible abuse and very restricted everyday been connected with a newly formed women's conditions of life. And so, it is important to have a studies program at Utkal University in clear criticism of the Taliban. But this criticism has Bhubaneswar. Because of the demands of childcare, to be contextualised. We need to understand the in the past two years I haven't been as involved with conditions that have led to the rise of Islamic the first two groups. fundamentalism. We need to understand that it was Western powers that led to the Taliban coming to Ena power. At the same time, we need to contextualise What are the kinds of work that these groups are religious fundamentalism. There is an automatic engaged in? tendency to identify Afghanistan and other Islamic countries as misogynist, to see them as stuck in Chandra some medieval patriarchal time warp compared Reflecting on these groups, I realize that neither the with the West. We need to challenge this picture. organization in India nor the one in the US is After all, we live with our own patriarchies and defined as a feminist organization. Both were misogynies in the USA and Canada! defined as organizations that had poor working So what I think is important is really to class people at their centre. So that's interesting. pay attention to how, in the West, representations of Awareness is a grassroots group made up gender have been central in this war. This strategy of peasants and tribals. You know Orissa has almost ties into other forms of control, of global capitalism the largest tribal population in India. It is also one and racism. This has implications not just for of the poorest states. You can see very very clearly women in Afghanistan, but also women in the the effects of globalization, partly because of the West. Sept 11 has made it virtually impossible for multinationals that are moving in and essentially any of us to stand outside all of this. The moment dispossessing tribal populations of their land, their you do, you are disloyal, unpatriotic, un-American. way of life, their language, their culture. It is very similar to the native American situation. There are mobilization. If you win a battle, it stops there. On groups working actively to challenge these things, the other hand, if there is an agenda of political which is very exciting. education, in which the organization has really gone Grassroots Leadership came out of the through the stages of political education with the civil rights movement. It's been around now for constituency that it is working with, then I think that about twenty years and their primary work was there is a deep level impact. Often times it is building the infrastructure of a social movement empowering in the sense that people then act on within the South, that was committed to social and their own behalf, so you don't then have the economic justice for poor working people and situation of the organizers going in from the people of colour. A lot of the work that this outside, doing that work. organization does is work with different And for me, that was the exciting part of communities around very particular issues to help both of these groups, they both seemed to have that people strategize, organize, mobilize. They facilitate commitment to political education and that's learning around particular issues, but then they something that has always interested me. It's not move out so that those communities essentially education the way the academy defines education, build their own organization. Many of these groups as you know. become the infrastructure of a larger movement. It's In addition to a similar focus on political just been an incredible experience and actually it education and a similar way of thinking about was my work with them that led me to my present organising, both organisations had an acute sense of concerns, because this group began working on a how the local and the global connect for the issues campaign against privatization about four or five around which you mobilize within very finite, local years ago. Now they are doing really good work contexts. For example, at Grassroots we were around the privatization of prisons. organizing around the privatization of the service And the Women's Studies programme at industry at the University of North Carolina and Utkal is new - less than five years old. But it has trying to make connections between all the layoffs community organising, and community service at and the resultant impoverishment of communities of its center. colour and the effects of structural adjustment programmes on poor women in third world Alissa contexts. Did you find that the groups in the South and North Organising against globalization was also had similar or different priorities? urgent in Orissa. It is one of those places where you can almost see what's going to happen in the rest of Chandra the world, because it is thrown into such stark relief. Although one group was situated in Orissa and one The government is not a strong advocate for the was in North Carolina, the issues that they were people at all, and it is a poor state, so that there is an dealing with were very similar, as were the assumption that all of these conglomerates can walk analyses, the values and the strategies that each of in and do whatever. It's almost as if the Indian the groups had. government has sanctioned it. On the other hand, The most exciting part for me, and where Orissa has a history of resistance and now there is I think I was able to make the link with these groups incredible mobilization against globalization. It's and perhaps have played some part in helping to one of the places where tribal people are organizing think through the issues and the organizing, had to in a big way, to the extent that there is armed do with political education. struggle in particular tribal communities. Women A number of grassroots organizations are also at the forefront of a lot of these tribal employ strategies around mass mobilization, but struggles. During my last visit in 2000,1 met some they don't necessarily have a very complex notion incredible women who were grassroots organizers, of how political education and conscientization are doing this kind of work and also doing cultural and central to mobilization. So when organizations political education in their community. focus on mobilization in reaction to particular So another similarity between the two injustices, they don't necessarily build on that groups was that they were very conscious of how struggles against globalization are grounded in the does in the USA or Canada. In fact very often so life of people who live in those spaces, but at the much of the work that you do is outside the same time they saw how it ties into larger global academy, so it does not constitute your primary processes. They both worked to highlight the local identity. For most left programs and people in many in the global and the global in the local other countries their identities are non-academic. simultaneously. Both of the organizations I worked What really needs to happen here is that people with have had the ability to do that. They had an within the academy have to start thinking in ways analysis that made those connections, and to be able that overflow the borders of the academy. We have to offer it to people so that they could see to widen the lens that we use to do our work, themselves in those ways as well. otherwise it becomes a totally sealed, bounded I facilitated exchanges between these two situation in which we define all of our social justice organizations. Organizers from Awareness came to work within the academy. It's important that this is the US and organizers from Grassroots went to not all there is. India. It was quite exciting and then we realized that there really were a lot of things in common. The Ena way the exchanges took place was that organizers Now was there any way in which the organisations came and met with the group here and were you were involved in differed in how they made the introduced to their work and their strategies. It was connections between the global and the local? like a study tour. And vice versa. So two people would go from here to Orissa, at different times. Chandra They would stay for about a month each with the Well, in one way the difference was an obvious one, organizer, as well as going into the tribal areas and which is that within the US, questions of nationality meet people. don't really come up (of course, September 11th Both of these groups also had a gender may have changed this). So, for example, even lens, even though the groups were not "women's though poor black people see their groups," but made up equally of men and women. disenfranchisement, there is often this construct of While gender was not necessarily ever the primary what it means to be an American that isn't taken lens, it was important that it always surfaced. And apart. That becomes a point of tension sometimes. this is also where a lot of the work that I did with In the Awareness group, on the other hand, there Grassroots leadership in North Carolina came in. was a very clear analysis of what it meant to be There was always an openness in the group to really Indian and poor and a tribal within India, to be pick through this in the same way as now there is an disenfranchised in that way, and what all that meant openness to think about gay and lesbian issues and in relation to the west, so those discussions were organizing gay and lesbian communities in the always visible. That was one of the differences. South. So now there is a lot of coalition building This came up in our exchange. When people from with gay and lesbian organizations, youth groups, India came to visit us, they seemed to know a lot and a lot of different anti-privatization groups. more about the US. They certainly know a lot about Recently, I have connected with a newly cultural stuff, they watch tv, but it's not just that. formed women's studies program at the University They seem to a have a very well formed political in Bhubaneswar. The person who runs it is critique of the US and its history of inequality and fabulous, and she has solid ties to the grassroots exploitation. This is not as true of people who went women's community in Orissa. Through her I ended from here to there. What is interesting to me is that up meeting many women doing activist work. So it tells us something of what it means to be there are a lot of possibilities and I just don't know American. how and when I can actually do this work, but what is exciting for me is building relationships with Alissa feminists who are within the academy. It's quite This is an important issue that often comes up in different, being in the academy, or being a public organizing across borders. Moving towards intellectual in India, in the sense that the academy transnational organising really requires working does not necessarily constrain you in India, as it through differences of national location and the kind of power relations that stem from where we are how it works in the outside world and its located. What kind of work do you see as necessary consequences in your life. It's also about how you to reconcile this tension? participate in relationships. That is one of the things that Grassroots Leadership would really implement Chandra and they are very good at that. Anyway, the lack of For a start, what is needed is more political political education is one of the reasons that we education. In fact, working through differences in don't do so well working across differences and national location became one of the learnings in the borders, simply because we move quickly and exchange. I am not sure I can say too much about it, glibly from the differences to the similarity of because I wasn't present at the time. My sense of its purpose. effects had more to do with the way the organizers who had these experiences were able to reflect on GLOBALIZATION, ACTIVISM AND THE them and then include them in their work at home. ACADEMY However, this kind of political education is difficult to carry out because it requires long term Ena connections between groups, which in turn requires We wanted to talk to you about something you money. We're not talking about organizations that referred to earlier in your discussions about the have lots of money. So the money required to get groups you were involved in, namely activism and people to go from one place to the other, across the the academy. I think this comes from the positions world, is not a priority. We need to address the fact that we struggle with, and that is how we bridge the that groups in the North and the South don't have gap between the academy and activism. So we're the same kind of power to define transnational wondering if you could talk a bit what you see as organising. Those in the South often don't have the some of the ways the academy poses limits and same power to publish, or the same power to have what you feel are some important strategies for their analysis taken forward into a global forum. We overcoming those kinds of constraints. need to address some of these differences more, to make them visible and to think seriously about Chandra strategies to address them; not pretend that they I think that the major thing for me - and which I don't exist or that there are only personality think is crucial for really doing this work -is always differences, which is what people, especially those to allow your own thinking about the academy to with more power, tend to do. overflow the walls of the academy; always to be What is crucial is that we deal with our always conscious of the extent to which your own sense of national identity and what comes with understanding of the academy or the university that. Another project that I am hoping to embark on governs what you are doing, and that includes the pretty soon is to work with some colleagues to write scholarship, the teaching, the institutional work. an introductory text which really talks about the And then to actively think outside that. importance of nation for the formation of feminist So for instance, will people outside the thinking. The nation as a category is so crucial now academy be able to read what I am writing? Who and one of the assumptions is that because capital are these people? That does not necessarily mean moves across borders nations don't matter anymore, that one must only do "non-academic" writing, it which is not true at all. just means that you're addressing questions that What we need to do is to start thinking have to be clearly of interest outside a specialised seriously, and in very holistic and layered ways, audience. One should address not just academic about the people that we are working with across questions or disciplinary questions, (which are borders. That learning process should become an interesting but then remain within the borders of important part of organizing. Learning about those disciplines), but rather larger questions of difference and learning about power from within is social transformation. So that's the first thing: to as important as constructing a strategy and agenda ensure that one's thinking and one's practices don't for struggle. I think that's really a central part of remain fenced in. political education. It's not just education, about The other thing is to think consciously about making not only our work in the academy, but about what I'm good at, what I feel I have learned also the academy itself accountable to larger over the years in the everyday work that I have questions of social justice. In other words, to try to done within academic settings, and how important work (maybe as a critical mass working together) that is as well. Even though I have often felt on really understanding how the academy produces alienated from the academy, I have never tried to certain kinds of citizens; and how that look for a job elsewhere. I have never made that understanding of citizenship is so crucial to the move, partly because I feel that the academy larger question of citizenship within the nation state provides both a very contradictory and productive or within the world in general. This should become base for thinking about fundamental issues of a visible part of the work that one does. There are democracy, social justice and citizenship. At one people situated within the field of education who try level it is an institutional structure that is a part of to do some of these things, even though the capitalist relations of rule within the nation state as discipline of education is very traditional and often well as internationally. closes down these questions rather than opening Therefore, it is really important that we them up. My sense, though, is that there are certain think about exactly what is happening with the spaces in the Canadian academy where there are academy now, because very concrete changes are people who do this work. I have learned quite a bit taking place and have been taking place for the last from that. In fact some of the work on education twenty years or so. Even though that is still going and globalization is coming out of Canada, not the on, I still think that the academy is one of the very US, and that is very exciting. few places that provides a space for imagining At a personal level, I really had to step opposition, for producing multiple subjectivities outside the academy into intellectual and organizing that are capable of critical thinking and resistant spaces that were not academic spaces, in order to action against the institution itself. I really do re-enter and really think about what I was doing. It believe that educational spaces, especially higher was my work with the grassroots organizations that educational spaces, are important spaces for that pushed me to think in more concrete ways about the kind of activist work, such as mobilizing resistance. work I was doing within the academy. Some of this If you think about where social movements come thinking really would not have happened if I had from, student organizing has been absolutely stayed within the boundaries of the academy, fundamental to many, many moments of revolution because of course the academy works by mystifying and changes that have taken place in cultures all all of these things for those of us who are in there. over the world. You know it's one of those things I I would have experienced alienation, I would have never want to forget, because if you forget that, then experienced disenfranchisement, which of course I you can become totally cynical about the academy. have in different ways, in different places, but I'm not sure I would have actually started to analyze the Alissa institution in the way that I'm doing now, if I had You mentioned that you know a number of not stepped outside it. You see this is the thing feminists and especially women of colour, who feel about privilege, this is why I say that I don't know that they want to leave the academy. I wonder if if I could have seen this if I had remained within. you could comment about the difficulties of The privilege that one has being in the academy is integrating anti-racist feminist activism in the the privilege not to see certain things. And the fact academy. of this privilege becomes invisible to us in the academy. Chandra This does not mean that it is easy to bridge The academy has always been hostile to feminists the gap between the academy and activism. A lot of of colour and I am now talking specifically about feminists I know, and a lot of feminists of colour feminists who have radical politics. There is a long that I know, raise serious questions about whether history of feminists of colour having difficulty even the academy is the right place for them. It is not that finishing PhDs, in the American academy. I can I haven't faced those questions or that I don't think count women on the fingers of my two hands who about them. I think about them, but I also think are very important in the feminist movement in the United States, but who had difficulty finishing their certain experiences in common in the academy if PhDs in the academy, because it is a white you share radical politics and if you're anti-racist. supremacist masculinist academy. My own On the other hand, we've often gone from that sense experience of going through a PhD program is very of camaraderie to thinking too quickly or too easily similar. So that's one level. about being in solidarity without necessarily having Then another level is the fact that for done the work on each other's differences, on each women of colour and especially feminists of colour other's histories, on what potentially divides our academic jobs are more like a revolving door in the communities. United States. So many of us get temporary jobs. Another piece of this is our relationships We're often invited to these very prestigious visiting with white feminists, which is profoundly important positions and sometimes there is a name attached to in the academy, because you know whatever ground the position. That doesn't mean a whole lot, just that feminists have covered in the academy has been that person funded it or something. The moment largely ground that white feminists have covered. that the two or three years are up, then out you go. This is not to say that I think there is some I don't know any case in which it has turned out to homogeneous notion of white feminism, or about be a permanent position. So there's a long history of how white feminists behave or act, but a revolving door for women of colour and feminists unfortunately, speaking now from my own location of colour and even white women feminists who are in women's studies in the US, I believe that US political in certain ways, or whose politics are not women's studies programmes have not de-colonized accommodationist. themselves in terms of racism and imperialism. Then there is another history of the denial of tenure. There is the assumption that the work you TRANSNATIONALISING WOMEN'S do is trivial or political or community oriented, STUDIES none of which the academy rewards. So the academy is basically hostile to feminists of colour. Ena Many of us go through day-to-day struggles to What do you see as a major pedagogical challenge establish a voice, to establish a community, to do that faces women's studies in a globalized era? Here the work we want to do, without any sense that it is in Canada, often because of the position of Canada, appreciated or supported. Because of all of these especially vis-a-vis the United States, but also things I think many people have just decided it's not Britain, there is a nationalism in women's studies worth the struggle. With the increasing programs and so one of the things that we wanted to corporatization of the academy in the US, it start thinking about was the challenges of keeping becomes less and less clear whether the work that women's studies abreast of the kind of challenges you are doing in places like African studies, brought out by transnational politics. women's studies or gay and lesbian studies, is seen as resistance of any kind. If you were tokenized to Chandra the extent that you happen to be the only person, or I think that this is a really important question and one of four people on a large campus doing this it's actually precisely what I have been trying to work, you ask yourself, is this worth it, is this the take apart in the last few years, because I think over kind of impact I want to have or could I be of better the last five or so, there's been a big push within the service in a different place. I think that those issues US to internationalize women's studies. are very particular to women of colour. What's interesting about this is that if you There are also other tensions in terms of think about where the push to internationalize has how the academy in the US plays off immigrant originally come from in the US academy, it has women of colour against US born women of colour. been from the Federal government. And that had to Then there are our own misunderstandings within do with the formation of area studies programs, our own community, where on the one hand we where originally the funding was tied to US have embraced each other because obviously we do imperialism. For instance, the first area studies have experiences in common. Whether you're program in the United States was Russian studies. immigrant or whether you're US born, you do have What is more recent is that it is not just the Federal government but the corporate world that is also look at one's national privilege. So I think that's one pushing to internationalize curricula, because, of of the places that there needs to be a lot of work. course, we have to understand everybody else I have started to look at the different ways around the world better so we can trade with them. in which women's studies is internationalizing in the There are more corporate alliances now, in the book I am working on now. I've identified about sense that there is a lot of funding from different three frameworks. Embedded in each are alternative corporations for chaired professorships, for sports pedagogies of anti-globalization, alternative ways in teams, for scientific research, etc. This is one of the which women's studies links the local and the ways that the academy is shifting. global. What I've been trying to do is to sort through What is interesting is that when women's these models, to figure out what relationships get studies programmes have internationalised, the set up between students and teachers among funding has often come from foundations which different communities. What are the relations of have funded three to five year grants in different power that work here and what kinds of notions of universities in the US for bringing area studies and sameness and difference are set up? women's studies together. For example the Ford Very briefly, the first is what I call a Foundation has done this. Ford is an interesting "feminist as tourist" model. This is where women's organization in that it has had many feminists who studies courses "add women from other countries" have been at its helm for a long time. into existing frameworks. The second is the While such funding has led to the "feminist as explorer" model. Here one would often internationalisation of the curricula, it has often find very detailed and complicated courses that are done so in very problematic ways. This is actually added to the curriculum, entire courses which would part of what I have been writing and thinking about be on women in the third world, or women in recently. I do agree with Ella Shohat1 about the Africa, or women in India or something like that. nationalism of women's studies. In fact, one of the Yet they don't necessarily make a difference in the things that I've been trying to discuss with women's framework of the larger curricula, as the central studies faculty is the totally untaught notion of the courses still end up being centred around US or United States of America within this supposedly Eurocentric experiences. American studies for globalized curriculum. This new curriculum has instance, is never included within area studies. become another way of shoring up the nationalism America is not an area, but everywhere else is! And of the US. no connections are made between the projects of We've moved quite a bit in the last ten area studies and race and ethnic studies. So in other years to become more proficient at addressing the words, a women's studies department or programme relationships of race, class and gender, but nation is can essentially claim to be international by adding omitted, especially in pedagogical work. This is courses about people all over the world, without another interesting phenomenon, the fact that the seriously addressing those issues, like racism, that scholarly research is often just ahead of the have been uncomfortable over the past ten years. I pedagogical work. It makes me ask the question, think this is really terrible. For example, you can how valid is that scholarly work to our everyday avoid paying attention to the ways in which practices? When "nation" appears within women's racialization or heterosexualization was constitutive studies pedagogy, it does so in reference to "other" in forming the US nation state. places, so if you are teaching about Africa, or a Finally, the third model is what I refer to as particular country, then nation as a category a feminist solidarity model, which is really about becomes important, because you're teaching about bringing the transnational and the national in very different societies. Rarely does the US appear as a close dialogue with each other. It also involves category in such discussions, and in my opinion one teaching comparatively, especially about how the of the main challenges of thinking transnationally is local and the global are simultaneously present in that you have to start thinking about yourself in the all contexts. This necessitates radically revisioning same kinds of terms as you think about everybody how the entire curriculum works and how the else. Part of the privilege of Eurocentric, courses relate to each other. It means that the US or Americacentric women's studies, is never having to Canada is no longer the centre of the curriculum, where everybody else gets added on. It means So we're canonizing, or we're legitimizing, this re-thinking the curriculum and the pedagogy in a particular space in terms of scholarship and deeply de-centered and comparative way. Such a activism and now we're also doing that in terms of de-centred approach does not mean that local the curriculum. Whether we have thought through questions cannot be asked and taught, but that this precisely what this involves, what the politics of is placed in the context of issues of power and the knowledge are that are involved in creating a social construction of sameness and difference. transnational pedagogy and curriculum in women's Obviously the time to do it is now. In fact studies, is a different question. And I think a lot of most programs are not only moving to energy needs to go in here. internationalize the curriculum, but if you look at job descriptions now for women's studies, they are hiring faculty who work on transnational feminism.

ENDNOTE

1. Ella Shohat. "Area Studies, Transnational ism, and the Feminist Production of Knowledge," Signs 26.4 (Summer 2001): 1269-72.

REFERENCES Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," in Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1991, pp. 51-80. . "Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity," in Chandra Talpade Mohanty & Jacqui Alexander, eds. Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 3-29.